Five topics to watch with NASCAR season closing in

Saturday night’s non-points race at Daytona International Speedway will mark the unofficial start of the 2012 NASCAR season.

It was only three months ago Tony Stewart won his third Sprint Cup Series championship in dramatic fashion and NASCAR crowned new champions in its Nationwide (Ricky Stenhouse Jr.) and Trucks series (Austin Dillon).

While many of the faces competing for race wins and championship this year will be the same, many new story lines will unfold as the new season kicks off with the Budweiser Shootout.

Here’s a look at five things to keep an eye on:

1. Old title contenders meet the new title contenders

With little new talent arriving in the series, the list of contenders for this season’s Cup championship will look much like 2011’s.

You should expect to see the likes of Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick in the mix once again. Brad Keselowski, who finished fifth in points last season, appears ready make another run and Dale Earnhardt Jr. could well make consecutive trips to the Chase for the first time since the format’s inception in 2004.

There should still be a surprise or two along the way, particularly with the new wild-card spots in place. Keep an eye on AJ Allmendinger and Kasey Kahne to perhaps win their way in.

2. It’s all Danica, all the time

It might have only seemed that Danica Patrick was running full time in NASCAR given all of the attention, but this will be her first full season.

Patrick plans to run the full Nationwide series schedule with JR Motorsports and will do 10 Cup races - including the Daytona 500 - with a team fielded jointly by Stewart-Haas Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing.

There’s no question that focusing on just one form of motorsports should help ease Patrick’s transition from the IndyCar Series. Will that alone be enough to help her reach Victory Lane in either series? That remains in doubt.

3. The cars are more relevant

On first glance, it will be difficult for race fans to be able to tell this year’s Cup cars are more relevant to what manufacturers actually sell, but it’s true. It actually will be more visible next season when 2013 models debut.

However, NASCAR’s transition to electronic fuel injection is a big (first) step to helping the car manufacturers use their NASCAR participation to fuel passenger car sales.

If the change to EFI goes well, fans may not notice much change in competition (which is the goal, after all). But teams will.

Teams can retrieve telemetry post-race to make performance decisions and teams will be able to retrieve data after practice and qualifying to help make prerace adjustments to their EFI systems.

4. Drivers, personalities more engaged in social media

Many drivers and other personalities in NASCAR - including some of the sport’s executives - already interact with fans in various social media outlets, including Twitter and Facebook. Look for that to increase this season.

In fact, outside of events tailored directly to drivers’ fan clubs or personal appearances, social media will be one of the main ways fans can win race tickets and participate in various other giveaways throughout the season in an effort to promote events.

5. It shouldn’t be a secret any more

Officials announced last month they would no longer levy secret — or unpublicized — fines against drivers whose comments are considered disparaging of NASCAR. It was also clear, however, that NASCAR officials still believe there is a need to punish such behavior.

It will be interesting to see the reaction this season should NASCAR feel the need to penalize a driver for such comments and how it deals with the immediate publicity around it since it won’t take weeks for the information to leak out.

The topics that have drawn some of the recent fines — debris cautions, restrictor-plate racing and EFI — won’t be going away anytime soon.